Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria, to include the Brian Ritchie Collection (Part III)

A fine Great War M.C. group of seven awarded to Quarter-Master and Lieutenant J. Clay, Leicestershire Regiment, late Grenadier Guards: decorated for his bravery on the Somme as a Company Sergeant-Major, he was also a recipient of the Russian Medal of St. George for Bravery, 1st class

Military Cross, G.V.R., unnamed as issued; Queen’s South Africa 1899-1902, 3 clasps, Cape Colony, Transvaal, Wittebergen (5805 Corpl., Gren. Gds.); King’s South Africa 1901-02, 2 clasps, South Africa 1901, South Africa 1902 (5805 Serjt., Grenadier Guards); 1914-15 Star (10108 Sjt., Leic. R.); British War and Victory Medals (Q.M. & Lieut.); Russian Medal of St. George for Bravery, 1st class, gold, the reverse numbered ‘10940’, unnamed, contact marks and edge bruising, particularly to the earlier awards, cleaned and lacquered, about very fine or better (7) £1800-2200

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Collection of Medals to the Leicester Regiment and Yeomanry formed by the late Trevor Harris.

View
Collection

M.C. London Gazette 26 September 1916:

‘For conspicuous gallantry in action. When his company officers became casualties he took command and led the company with great skill and courage. Owing to his fine personal example the company was able to consolidate and hold its position.’

Russian Medal of St. George for Bravery London Gazette 15 February 1917.

John Clay, who was born in Enfield, Middlesex and enlisted in the Grenadier Guards on his 18th brithday in May 1896, first witnessed active service in the Boer War. By that stage he was serving as a Corporal in the 2nd Battalion’s Machine-Gun Section, and witnessed, among other bloody actions, the ill-fated attack on Biddulphsberg on 29 May 1900, when the Grenadiers were badly mauled - see Brevet Major Hon. A Russell’s Records of the 2nd and 3rd Battalions Grenadier Guards in South Africa 1899-1902 for several eye-witness accounts. Sixty years later, when aged 81 years, Clay gave his own description of that fateful day to a local journalist:

‘At this the General said to the Colonel “Move on Lloyd.” We wheeled with five or six companies in extended order facing the objective at a distance of about 1500 yards, into a field of mealies which were ripening at a height of three or four feet. On reaching 1000 yards we were met by a rain of bullets and our casualties grew. Our gun officer ordered us to leave the gun and get down to it. We could see no enemy but we blazed away. It was woe betide the man who did not lie still and keep his head down. The artillery kept up a continued bombardment, but about 4 p.m. the mealies field behind us was ablaze. As the fire came towards us we covered our faces with our pith helmets and forced our way through the flames and smoke. Never shall I forget the screams and cries of the wounded as we drew our gun out to the left to flank the fire. Our Colonel was badly wounded and of No. 6 Company of 100 men only 30 escaped ... ’


Clay, who was subsequently mentioned in despatches by Lord Kitchener (London Gazette 29 July 1902), was discharged in May 1912. On the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914, however, he enlisted in the Leicestershire Regiment and, as a result of his previous military service, was quickly appointed an N.C.O. Going out to France at the end of July 1915, as a C.S.M. in the 6th Battalion, he remained on active service in that theatre of operations for the remainder of the War, a rare visit home being in December 1917, when he collected his M.C. at an investiture at Buckingham Palace. And there can be no doubt that he won his M.C. for bravery on the Somme, not least in the 6th Battalion’s gallant assault on Bazentin-le-Petit Wood on 14 July 1916, when it suffered over 400 casualties.






The Battalion returned to the Somme in September of the same year, and suffered nearly 300 more casualties in the attack launched near Gueudecourt on the 25th - it was on the following day that the award of Clay’s M.C. was announced in the London Gazette. Commissioned as a Lieutenant and Quarter-Master in the 7th Battalion in January 1918, he remained in France until the end of hostilities - see Matthew Richardson’s The Tigers, the 6th, 7th, 8th & 9th (Service) Battalions of the Leicestershire Regiment for further details, including the following reference to Clay’s unrelenting penchant for rigid discipline:

‘Corporal Charles Monk of the 7th Battalion recalled one occasion after the war had finished:

I happened to say - and my officer [the Quarter-Master] heard me, I said to Charlie Partridge, ‘Oh, Charlie, will you do so and so’ and the officer heard me, he said ‘Come here Corporal’, I said ‘Yes, Sir’. He said ‘Don’t let me hear you ask Privates to do things, while you’ve got those stripes on your arm, you order them.’ He said, ‘You’ll never make a good soldier as long as you’ve a hole in your arse.’ I said, ‘Thank you Sir - my mother would be ashamed of me if I went home what you called a good soldier.’

The officer in question was Lieutenant Clay, an ex-Regular soldier, Boer War veteran and formerly R.Q.M.S. of the 6th Battalion. It was not just the strength of the language that he used which betrayed Clay’s regular army background - accustomed as he was to the harshness of pre-1914 peacetime soldiering; to his mind, discipline was not to be slackened simply because hostilities had ceased.’

And given his appointment to Quarter-Master on the Regular Army Reserve of Officers, General List, in January 1922, it seems probable that others found themselves on the sharp end of Clay’s tongue for a year or two longer.

Sold with a quantity of original documentation, including a signed statement from the Adjutant, 2nd Grenadiers, confirming Clay’s Boer War “mention”, dated 31 December 1908; his Parchment Certificate of Discharge, dated 11 May 1912; War Office communication requesting his attendance at an investiture at Buckingham Palace, dated 10 December 1917; Certificate of Discharge, dated 11 February 1918, on Clay’s appointment to a commission; commission warrant for the rank of Quarter-Master on the Regular Army Reserve of Officers, General List, dated 24 January 1922; and a fine studio portrait photograph, in uniform.